Diana: no wonder people are confused
August 31, 2007 — Brendan
I work close enough to Kensington Palace Gardens to walk around them occasionally at lunchtime. It’s a post-prandial palliative for the pressured world of PR.
Today, however, it was quite surreal, more so than usual (it gets surreal occasionally when you are dive-bombed by Canada geese or see terrapins floating around in the pond). Today, it was full of people bemoaning the loss, ten years ago to the day, of Diana.
There wasn’t actually weeping and wailing or gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, but it was quite strange. It was almost like walking into a stage set, with media everywhere (the nice man from London news was there but he didn’t say hello), someone playing Candle in the Wind on a stereo, phalanxes of photos, people picknicking. All you needed was Elton John to materialise from thin air and the suspension of disbelief would be complete.
Stepping into this parallel universe it occured to me that really, that was the Diana phenomenon. It was the closest people got to ‘real fairytale.’ Diana was real, she was really a princess, she had real children, you can really see where she really lived, and died. She also appeared on the telly a lot.
This crossover between real and fantasy was, today, for me, a crossover between real and media. Which are essentially the same thing in a lot of people’s minds. Remember how strange it was to see Larry Hagman interviewed on Wogan while at the height of the evil incarnate that was JR, around the early 80s? And apparently John Altman has been abused in the street during his stints as Nasty Nick on Eastenders.
It seems to me that as entertainment swallows reality, so news programmes adopt the entertainment clothing (or lack thereof - what could be more entertaining than Emily Maitlis’s legs). No wonder people are confused. After becoming hooked on the Spencer Soap (think Dallas/ Dynasty/ Eastenders/ Coronation Street rolled into one, mixed to a dropping consistency and baked for 3 years at 700 degrees fahrenheit) they’re still bereft. They still want that elusive yet strong fix of realityfantasy. And today, in Kensington Palace Gardens, they were able, tantalisingly, to step back into that media-created fairytale.
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Today I nearly threw my copy of the Guardian across the room. The offending article - quite literally - was 
He continues: “Two days later, I went to Presaro on the Adriatic coast to conduct a prearranged interview with Luciano Pavarotti at his holiday villa.” There we go again - ‘holiday villa.’ Am I alone in thinking holiday villas are, well, posh? I know Brits are rapidly buying large amounts of coastal Spain but do they all have ‘holiday villas’? Then there’s a double-whammy: turns out Pavarotti was inconsolable over Diana’s death (it made him “cry all day”) then, by turn, that Chancellor is infatuated with Pavarotti. “He is” - apparently - “a very lovable man.”
So, to recap: he still ’stays’ in a house in Tuscany; he’s friends with Lady Victoria Waymouth; she’s an interior designer; and her sister is also ’staying’ with them, in this house, in Tuscany. “Victoria’s GP” turned out to be a homeopathy quack, so she died. Sad, but again, why “Victoria’s GP”? I don’t call the nice person who sits behind a desk and gives me pills ’my doctor’. I don’t say to people “I’m going to see my doctor”. I’m going to the doctors. Or I’m going to see the doctor. Not “I’m going to see my doctor. In Tuscany. She’s a homeopath, you know.”
Today I read in the 
Pandora is the result of the Music Genome project, the exercise of which - identifying musical properties - is neatly referred to as the music’s ‘DNA’. By building up a playlist in Pandora you are essentially matching music DNA to your own DNA. One project I recently set up at my company is a company-wide Pandora music station. Anyone from the company can log on and add their preferences. In this way we end up with the company’s music DNA, we get to listen to some half-decent music (no more Gwen Stefani), and some people learn a bit about new media to boot. Everyone wins.
